tossed salad and boiled eggs

Green Gulch Farm salad greens in my favorite wooden salad bowl

It is Sunday morning. I've woken without an alarm. I've posted my poem. I have a few eggs boiling on the stove. We will soon be eating those eggs with a green salad and slices of toast topped with homemade jam. Green Gulch Farm adds lovely little flowers to their salad greens mix, and for me, it makes all the difference. It is a good day. I'm happy. That's all...

some more simplicity…

Life has been busy lately and we've been keeping our meals simple. Busy or not, it's been a satisfying way to eat. Superb ingredients shine with minimal preparation.

Baby Arugula Salad
Mince 2 cloves of garlic, sprinkle with salt, and use the edge of a knife to smash into a rough paste. Place the paste in the bottom of a large wood salad bowl. Finely chop two anchovy fillets (packaged in olive oil) and add to the bowl. Drizzle some olive oil (I am currently using Stonehouse Estate Blend) into the bottom of the bowl...don’t be shy...indulge a little. Squeeze the juice of one lemon into the bowl. Add a large amount (as much as you can fit and still have room to toss the greens) of crisp clean arugula into the bowl. Toss to coat with contents in bottom of the bowl. Add salt and course ground pepper to taste, and toss again. Top with shavings of Pecorino Romano cheese and homemade croutons (I cheated and used Mollie Stone's).

Inspired by a perfectly balanced arugula salad made by my Mother-in-law during her visit to Point Reyes Station.

citrus & cinnamon

I cannot stop thinking about blood oranges. The lovely specimens I have found lately have been so delicious and juicy that I've been hesitant to alter them in any way, but I have perfected a very simple pairing to which I've become addicted.

My inspiration was found in Claudia Roden's The Book of Jewish Food (thanks Mom). Ms. Roden writes of a common and very popular North African dessert, Salade d'Oranges, a combination of oranges, orange-blossom water, and cinnamon.

I typically begin preparing my version before dinner. 1st I find a pretty bowl and a sharp pairing knife. 2nd I remove all skin and pith and separate oranges into sections. 3rd I drizzle honey over the oranges. Lastly I sprinkle cinnamon on top.

I let the oranges, honey, and cinnamon mingle while I am eating dinner and thinking about how fabulous the oranges are going to taste, and then I eat them for dessert. Pure bliss.

sweet & simple cucumber recipe from mom

once i ran out and purchased the ingredients, i was able to quickly and easily prepare this recipe and mom was correct, i couldn't stop eating it - yum!

excerpt from an email from my mom:

My favorite way to eat them now is sliced into a pretty Chinese bowl with a bit of thinly sliced scallion, a tablespoon or more of rice wine vinegar (the seasoned one because it is sweet and salty), a drop or two of toasted sesame oil, a sprinkling of black and white sesame seeds, and a few grinds of black pepper. So delicious... You can't stop eating it.

Pt. Reyes Test Kitchen: Radishes and Beets

You might wonder, what are you going to do with radishes on a regular basis? Obviously, we put them in salads. That's just fine. They fit right in and are a good source of Vitamin C. The French Breakfast radishes are particularly good sliced thin and served on a slice of fresh bread with butter and salt. I'm not sure where we read about this....but it is an excellent treat.

However, real men don't only have two options for eating a vegetable, especially when neither of them involved cooking. This is where yesterday's test kitchen picked up. I thought...I've never heard of sauteed radishes, let's give it a shot. And while I was at it, I harvested three types of beets from the beds. The dark purple is Bull's Blood, the yellow are Goldens, and the candy-cane looking beet is a Chioggia.

Experiment One - Sauteed Radishes vs. Raw Radishes. The radishes were OK sauteed, you could use them in a pasta perhaps as a source of nutrition and you might not notice they were there. Denise thought the texture was a little off and I just thought they were a little bland.
Verdict -When radishes lose their crispness and their spicy kick, what's the point.

Experiment Two - Sauteed Beet Greens vs. Raw Beet Greens. The Golden and the Chioggia greens are actually green, the Bull's Blood are red/purple. I cooked all three and the Golden and Chioggia greens were excellent cooked. The Bull's Blood...not so much. The funny thing about this experiment, is that if you just bite into a Bull's Blood green raw, they are the sweetest and best. Almost sweet enough to make into a salad green, especially when they are young. On the other hand, the Golden, and particularly the Chioggia were really unpleasant as raw greens.
Verdict - Sauteed Golden and Chioggia Beet Greens make an excellent green for a dinner, lunch, or perhaps even frittata/omelet. The baby Bull's Blood greens could be used in a mesclun or on their own as a salad.

Experiment Three - Sauteed Beets vs. Raw Beets. OK, OK, this isn't much of an experiment. Of course the beets will be good. But what we found interesting about the Chioggias was that they are excellent eaten raw, like say, a radish. In fact, I prefer them to radishes raw. The Bull's Blood and Goldens are not so good raw. They have a hint of beet taste, but it seems that they only really release their sweetness/taste once cooked. (This might also have to do with size. The beets I harvested are about an inch and a half in diameter.
Verdict - Chioggias, in my opinion, are the rockstars of the beet world. The root is good raw, good cooked. The greens are excellent cooked. I have built a new "Beet Box" out back and ordered more Chioggia seeds. My plan is to use succession planting for the rest of the season so we always have Chioggias on hand.